Download the latest report to learn about which companies are working to build a green Internet by powering our online world with renewable energy.

Build a Green Internet

Ask the Internet companies you love to build a greener online, so that we can all have a greener offline.

About

The Internet needs a lot of energy, and its footprint grows every day as we live more and more of our lives online. That’s why Greenpeace is calling on major Internet companies to lead the way in renewable power.

Over the past few years, after hearing from Greenpeace supporters, both Apple and Facebook committed to 100 percent renewable energy, causing major investments in wind and solar energy.

Download our free NEW extension, Click Clean Scorecard, to find out which of the companies behind the world’s most popular websites are leading the way or falling behind in the race to build a greener online.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Apple’s aggressive pursuit of its commitment to power the iCloud with 100% renewable energy has given the company the inside track among the IT sector’s leaders in building a green Internet. Apple has made good on its pledge by building the largest privately owned solar farms at its North Carolina data center, working with its utility in Nevada to power its upcoming data center there with solar and geothermal energy, and purchasing wind energy for its Oregon and California data centers. Apple’s commitment to renewable energy has helped set a new bar for the industry, illustrating in very concrete terms that a 100% renewable Internet is within its reach, and providing several models of intervention for other companies that want to build a sustainable Internet. Download the full report.

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Facebook

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Facebook continues to grow and dominate the global social media landscape with 1.23 billion monthly active users. Facebook has made huge strides forward since 2012 to become one of the clear green Internet leaders. Radical improvements in transparency and efforts to deliver significant wind energy investment in Iowa have helped drive Facebook into the top tier of companies creating the green Internet. By building on the advocacy it has started with energy utilities to drive more clean energy investment, and continuing to find ways to bring renewable energy to scale to power its data centers in North Carolina and Oregon, Facebook is setting a clear bar for other major social media networks and Internet companies to follow. Download the full report.

Google

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Google remains a leader within the sector on the deployment of renewable energy, with a strong combination of procurement, investment, and policy advocacy helping to green the grid even in areas where Google does not have data center operations. Google continues to make progress towards its commitment to be 100% renewably powered, and has outlined clear principles for how it will seek to expand its supply of renewable energy as it continues to grow. Google will need to redouble these efforts in several markets, however, as its ability to access renewable energy is being restricted by monopoly electric utilities in parts of the US as well as in new markets abroad as it continues to expand its global cloud infrastructure. Download the full report.

Yahoo

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Yahoo has been steadily expanding its online presence through acquisitions such as Tumblr, and also through an expansion of its curated news and entertainment channels. Yahoo has been among the top performers in percentage of clean energy since Greenpeace began evaluating Internet companies, and regained some of its momentum in the past year with the announcement of a 25 MW wind energy purchase from a community wind farm development in Kansas, helping to power its Nebraska data center with renewable energy. Yet despite its relatively strong performance in securing a clean supply of electricity, Yahoo continues to limit the details of its energy performance to its annual CDP submission. Download the full report.

Equinix

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Equinix is home to a significant chunk of the Internet, with well over 100 data centers spread around
the world. Equinix collectively consumed 2,200 GWh of electricity in 2014, the equivalent to 200,000 average U.S. homes. Equinix’s adoption of a long-term commitment to be 100% renewably powered is by far the most significant change since Greenpeace last benchmarked the data center sector in 2014, and sets an important new bar that other colocation providers will need to meet as more and more of their customers make greenhouse gas and renewable energy commitments. At least for the short term, Equinix has established a clear competitive advantage. Download the full report.

Salesforce

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Salesforce continues to experience dramatic growth from its traditional CRM products and more recently its Cloud Analytics business model. The company has significantly expanded its data center operations to support this growth, including announcing two new leases in Europe. Salesforce’s emissions and energy footprint appear to be closely tracking this growth, with its reported greenhouse gas emissions increasing 30%, while its data center greenhouse gas emissions increased by double that, nearly 70%. Salesforce has made some progress in powering that growth with renewable energy for its most recent data center in the UK, but has not yet meaningfully translated its commitment to a 100% renewable electricity supply to the US, where it has the majority of its data center footprint. Download the full report.

Rackspace

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Though not a household name, Rackspace is well-known within the IT sector as one of the leading cloud and managed hosting providers, and a strong supporter of open-source computing platforms. Rackspace has begun to embrace a leadership role in supporting a digital economy that is powered with renewable energy. The company adopted a commitment to become 100% renewably powered in 2012 as part of a forward thinking energy policy, and is now in its early stages of operationalizing this commitment. Download the full report.

IBM

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

IBM has become more aggressive in its investments to stay in the top tier of global cloud companies, aiming to compete with Amazon Web Services both for new startups as well as major government accounts. Despite an impressive track record in reporting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions across IBM for the past twelve years, the same level of transparency has not yet carried over to IBM’s data center operations. Recent commitments to increase the amount of renewable energy powering its operations to 20% by 2020 are a promising sign that IBM is committed to making a “Smarter Planet”™ one that is renewably powered. Download the full report.

Microsoft

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Nearly three years after adopting a commitment to be “carbon neutral,” Microsoft has begun to take some concrete steps to power its existing data center infrastructure with renewable energy. The recently announced purchase of 175 MW of wind power for its Chicago data center is a clear step in the right direction. However, Microsoft has undergone a rapid expansion of its Azure cloud platform to close the gap with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and now operates 19 regional data centers with the capacity for nearly 12 million servers. Microsoft’s strategy for reaching its “carbon neutral” commitment remains primarily reliant on the purchase of unbundled renewable energy credits and carbon offsets, which have little if any impact on the energy powering its data centers. The continued lack of a meaningful strategy to guide its rapidly growing fleet of data centers with renewable energy leaves Microsoft falling further behind Google and Apple, and on a path similar to AWS not only in terms of its growth, but also in its being predominantly powered by dirty sources of electricity. Download the full report.

Amazon Web Services

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Amazon Web Services (AWS), owned by Amazon.com, continues to dominate the cloud computing market, providing all or part of the digital infrastructure behind many of the best known and fastest growing online brands, including Netflix, Pinterest, Imgur and Reddit. While AWS remains highly competitive on price for its cloud infrastructure, a number of AWS customers have privately expressed concern over the lack of data and attention being paid to the environmental footprint associated with the AWS cloud. AWS did adopt a long-term commitment to 100% renewable energy for its footprint in November of 2014, and followed this up with its first direct purchase of renewable energy in Indiana in January 2015. Despite these potentially significant shifts, the continued lack of transparency on the energy performance of the AWS cloud, combined with significant expansion of its infrastructure in utility territories that have little to no renewable energy capacity, would appear to indicate that AWS has not yet determined how it is going to make its commitment to renewable energy become real. Download the full report.

*Greenpeace provided AWS with facility power demand estimates to review. AWS responded that the estimates were not correct, but did not provide alternative data. Using conservative calculations based on public records, Greenpeace has used the best information available to derive power demand. See "Appendix II: Methodology" in the report for more information. Greenpeace invites AWS to provide more accurate data for its facility power demands.

Digital Realty Trust

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Digital Realty is the largest digital landlord in the world, with 131 data centers worldwide, roughly three-fourths of which are located in the US, 18% in Europe and 4% in Asia, totaling over 24 million square feet of rental space. Digital Realty operates on the wholesale end of the colocation spectrum, providing entire data center properties to large online brands, many of which now have adopted long-term commitments to be 100% renewably powered, including Facebook, Rackspace, Salesforce, Google, and very recently Equinix and Amazon Web Services. In response, Digital Realty has recently made some moves to address this demand, including much greater energy transparency, the adoption of a sustainability policy, and the creation of a new program to facilitate the purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) for clients that sign a new lease with Digital Realty. While these moves acknowledge the need to provide a renewable energy product for its customers, Digital Realty’s first offering falls far short of what most companies are seeking in terms of additionality. Digital Realty should look to the policy recently adopted by Equinix for a stronger model among colocation operators. Download the full report.

ebay

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Operating from a recent starting point of having each of its three primary data centers powered by utilities with very little renewable energy supply and a high percentage of coal, eBay continues to take steps to reduce its data center energy footprint, both by changing the supply of electricity to cleaner sources and reducing its net energy footprint. eBay continues to earn high marks for its transparency, but while its strategy to date has been effective in limiting the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions, eBay must look to move from “cleaner” sources of electricity toward securing greater amounts of renewable electricity that are actually clean. Download the full report.

Hewlett Packard (HP)

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

HP both provides hardware to Internet companies and
is rapidly expanding its own cloud business to compete in the enterprise market. The company maintains an impressive level of corporate-wide transparency and accountability
on reducing its emissions, but it could improve public disclosure on how it is reducing the energy footprint of its data center fleet. HP does have a corporate-wide emissions reduction target for 2020 that includes data centers, and the company is slowly increasing its purchasing of renewable energy via a limited number of on-site solar installations and a mixture of direct purchasing and renewable energy credits. However, HP is not showing the overall leadership needed to ensure its cloud expansion is driving demand for clean energy. Download the full report.

Telecity

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Telecity is one of the largest retail colocation providers in Europe, operating in 12 major markets across the continent and providing a European home for major online properties such as streaming music platform Spotify and professional social network Xing, as well as other companies evaluated in this report, including Akamai, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft. Telecity is currently proposing to merge with Interxion, another major data center operator in the EU, but the evaluation here is based on Telecity’s policies and performance pre-merger. Download the full report.

Dupont Fabros Technology

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

DuPpont Fabros Technology (DFT) is one of the largest wholesale data center colocation providers in the US, providing large blocks of data center capacity to a range of customers in several major markets, including companies like Facebook and Microsoft that also build their own data centers. By a very large margin, DFT’s largest market is Northern Virginia, with upwards of 200 MW in data center capacity built or under construction there, making DFT one of Dominion Energy’s largest customers. Dominion’s refusal to offer meaningful options to buy renewable electricity represents a significant long-term risk to DFT. Many of its largest customers have adopted goals to be 100% renewably powered, and as their leases in DFT Virginia spaces come up for renewal, many may take the opportunity to quickly achieve significant carbon reductions and increase their options to buy renewable energy by moving out of Virginia, as evidenced by Yahoo’s decision to leave its lease with DFT early. Download the full report.

Oracle

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Oracle provides enterprise-scale software products and computer hardware systems to the world’s largest corporations. Like others in this space, Oracle is now making a bigger play for cloud-based offerings, even partnering with Amazon Web Services to offer some of Oracle’s products via the AWS cloud. Oracle powers its own cloud services and solutions through its three main data centers in Texas, Colorado and Utah, with ten smaller facilities elsewhere. Like others, Oracle has focused on efficiency in its servers and data centers, but it lags behind sector leaders in building a renewably powered digital economy. Download the full report.

Akamai

Energy Transparency

Scope and level of detail made publicly available on energy consumption of IT infrastructure.

Renewable Energy Use & Advocacy

Akamai is one the largest global content distribution networks (CDN), helping online content providers deliver their content faster to users around the world. Akamai continues to expand with the rest of the Internet, delivering between 15% and 30% of Internet traffic through its network. As a CDN, Akamai’s network is highly distributed, with over 170,000 servers spread across 1,300 data centers in 101 countries. Akamai’s distributed business model and relationships with data center operators around the world put it in a unique position to be a catalyst for a renewably powered Internet. Download the full report.

* Akamai’s energy consumption is spread across 1,300 data centers around the world, making individual tracking of energy consumption difficult.